Publishers Determined to Kill E-Books - <AUTHOR> https://eclecticlight.co/2019/12/26/publishers-determined-to-kill-electronic-books/ <comment><USER2> As an indie author, I've paid more attention to what's going on in publishing than the average person over the last few years. This article has some things I could quibble with, but the overall premise is, I think, true. Publishers don't like the ebook market, and my guess is that it's because of how little control they have over it.

In the world of ebooks, indies actually have the upper hand. For one, we don't have the overhead of big publishers, so we can sell ebooks at more reasonable prices (while pocketing more than authors with traditional contracts). We have the ability to move more quickly and thus take advantage of new features (like Amazon's ad platform) earlier. We can sell worldwide with a click, instead of negotiating messy contracts.

With print on demand, we can also have our books in print. But publishers definitely have the upper hand there and, I presume, always will.

Also, as an indie I have the option to make my books available DRM-free.

Personally, I _like_ ebooks, especially for fiction. They weigh nothing. They have search. My highlights can get aggregated together. I can switch devices and even switch between ebook and audiobook. Further, I think there are very few print books that actually have real resale value, so that's not a big factor for me.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to give away print books, let alone resell them.

<comment><USER4> hmm, I buy 1 or 2 printed books every month, and I try to buy Used when Possible, it is just cheaper

<comment><USER5> That's the buyer's perspective though. I buy used books as well although I'll often actually pay a premium for an eBook because I have the most reading time when I'm traveling.

But selling low cost goods as an occasional thing is incredibly time consuming for the return. In the past I sold on Ebay every now and then and basically came to the conclusion that unless I was making $50+ on a transaction it just wasn't worth the hassle. Books are easier in general but they also are usually a race to the bottom in terms of pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and > music now sell and rent so well online?

Repeat after me: the average person doesn't read. The market for ebooks is a fraction of the market for movies and music.

OTOH, there is a viable market because there are such things as "avid readers" (people who read more than one book a month.) Those are the people ereaders are made for.

I predict that ebooks will be like jazz records: they not terribly popular, but they'll still be made because there's a devoted audience.

<comment><USER7> Well NO ONE I personally know buys or keeps physical books any more except for children's books if they have kindergarten or primary school kids. Everyone's book collection is on the Kindle including middle school and high school kids. Living in a tropical/sub-tropical humid climate, the tendency of physical book collections to deteriorate or grow mould is a major liability especially if you have small kids.

<comment><USER8> Whereas I genuinely think that everyone I know buys, owns and keep physical books. Some have only a few, some have hundreds and thousands, but all of them do.

I do live in a country comprised entirely of Oceanic and Subpolar Oceanic climate, though.

There's selection bias here; people tend to know people like themselves and people like each other. Be it people like themselves because they work together, or live near each other, or have similar hobbies, or are from the same family, or some other non-random selection bias, but however it happens, people tend to know people like themselves and people like each other. I have thousands of physical books and probably acquire a few dozen more each year; I tend to like people who like physical books, and presumably you do not.

<comment><USER5> >There's selection bias here; people tend to know people like themselves and people like each other.

And, presumably, someone who is young, mobile, and lives in a small urban apartment (and knows mostly people in the same boat) will tend to default to lugging and storing less stuff than older folks who have a roomy house. I know if I were starting out today I'd almost certainly have less of a physical footprint than I did in college and immediately afterwards.

<comment><USER8> Ha. You could almost be talking about me, as was. Moved in to this apartment 15 years ago, not long out of university. Been through a half-dozen jobs since then, ranging from less than ten minutes' walk away to literally in a foreign country (not remote working either - moved there while still paying rent on this one), and I'm starting to think that I'm going to end up buying a house purely to be able to build a proper library room for the books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly off topic, but I often wonder why there is no backlash on print media regarding the environmental aspect of this whole publishing industry. Most books are mass-printed, shipped to warehouses, then shipped to local sellers (or e.g. Amazon, that ships a single book to a buyer) - and the (huge) non- sellable rests are either deeply discounted or completely dumped. If you see a pile of the latest "bestseller" at the local store, its almost guaranteed that only a fraction is sold, the rest will be disposed.

Moreover, most print books, magazines and newspapers aren't even fully read by the buyers, let alone multiple times. Its a huge industry producing, promoting and selling mostly single-use items.

And the used market for most books is virtually non-existent: I had to move a couple of times and the paper weight was one of the biggest hurdles. I dumped lots of books because I couldn't find a buyer on the used market (handling would far exceed the value of the books, some companies buy used books only based on weight and condition) and even libraries and social services like the Caritas declined to take used books.

So, I'm really wondering why we as a society aren't more demanding on the sustainable side of the publishing business, especially the environmental effects. Ebooks could perhaps be a much more environment-friendly alternative, but I agree that publishers and market places have done a lot to make them less attractive, affordable and available for most readers in comparison to printed alternatives.

<comment><USER10> Our culture holds print books as sacred objects. Talking about the environmental impact of books is like talking about the environmental impact of churches, or music halls, or war memorials, or grave stones: it doesn't even make sense to talk about it because people don't imagine those things at the level of costs and impacts, they are inherently worthwhile.

If you propose printing less books, or even worse, destroying existing books that nobody reads to recycle their paper, you will quickly have a pitchfork- bearing mob at your door calling you a book-burner.

<comment><USER11> They'd be right, too, if not necessarily for the right reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and > music now sell and rent so well online?

[...]

> Then there's the question of what you get for your money with an eBook. > According to the publishers in that recent case in the CJEU, you get a > perpetual licence (not ownership) to access their copyright content, which > never deteriorates in the same way that physical books do. As a result, the > publishers claimed successfully, you aren't free to sell on your licence, > and can only do so if they, the copyright owners, agree. In other words, you > pay much the same price for something which immediately on purchase becomes > worthless.

Well... what's the difference there? That doesn't seem like it, since it's no less true of movies or music.

Actually, my guess is that most people never read most of the books they buy. Maybe they intend to, but it ends up mostly being some kind of affirmation of the kind of person they are. While the e-book experience has a lot to recommend it if your object is actually to read a lot of books (particularly outside the house), it doesn't do much to burnish your bookshelf.

<comment><USER12> > _According to the publishers in that recent case in the CJEU, you get a > perpetual licence (not ownership) to access their copyright content, which > never deteriorates in the same way that physical books do._

What crap argument is that?

In reality, a random physical book has expected useful lifetime longer than most publishers, longer than Internet and anything recognizable as personal computing ever existed. Books don't deteriorate into uselessness for decades. Licensed content on-line typically disappears after few years, very often together with the service that you rented it from in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Does it really though? In 100 years I think people will care more about Citizen Kane or Michael Jackson than Rich Dad, Poor Dad or Excel 95 for Dummies.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't seem fair to compare classics of two media with books that are definitively not in the same league.

I definitely want to be able to pick up my copy of Pale Fire in 30 years and read it. Similarly with The Idiot. Those physical books will definitely still be functional in three decades. And, if a copy is lost or damaged, it's easy to get a cheap replacement at a used bookstore, something that isn't possible with ebooks.

<comment><USER3> Of course, but the point of the comparison is that there is no shortage of forgettable books.

I predict it will be quite easy to download a new digital copy of The Idiot in 30 years if you lose access to the one you have today as well.

<comment><USER14> There is no shortage of forgettable _anythings_. If that was your point, it's a poor one.

If you could predict ahead of time what might be valued in the future, then you could discard the rest. But you cannot do that, since you are not from the future. Scraps of data once thrown away as mundane are now valued in the present by researchers; there is no reason to believe this won't continue to be true into the future. Even your poorly contrived example of mundane data was debunked easily by another commenter.

Keep what can reasonably be kept, and let future researchers worry about filtering it. Preemptive filtering will only deprive future researchers of data they'll desire for reasons you cannot presently fathom.

<comment><USER3> I took the claim to be that there was something inherent about books that made them more enduring than other forms of media, which just isn't really true. Anyway, libraries, among others, make these kinds of decisions all the time, because they don't have infinite space for books (hey, here's another reason ebooks might be valuable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and > music now sell and rent so well online?_

Well let's look at the technology involved:

Books have been around since writing and evolved from clay tablets which we can still "read" to this very day so long as the text is intact. Nothing other than your eyeballs and hands are needed to interface with a book. No batteries, headphones, passwords, or wires. Plus reading a book is quite a different experience as your mind is actively painting images and creating sounds. Video and audio can present some wonderful sensations but ultimately arent as personal as the creations of your minds eye (and ear). So books as they are work very well and do exactly what they were meant to do. Plus reading on a screen sucks and who wants to buy another electronic gizmo with a good screen like e ink which will become obsolete, fail, or have your book deleted after some DRM copyright spat? Please no.

Video and Audio NEED electronics. They are already hamstrung with a technological need so consuming via digital means is much more practical. And as far as physical media goes nowadays, it's less convenient than streaming. Though Music still enjoys a strong association with the medium being an art so it goes hand in hand with physical collecting which is why you still see tapes and vinyl. Like a book, you want to be able to hold it and also enjoy the art work. Some artists even release ultra limited handcrafted cases to house said physical media adding a more personal touch.

<comment><USER16> eReaders are amazing. I have 3 books that I am reading at the same time that I literally carry everywhere I go because it is so easy. I never did that with physical books.

Additionally, my Kindle was $90. Between all the books I can get for free from Project Gutenberg and how ebooks are often cheaper than physical books (and should probably be even cheaper given their effectively $0 distribution costs), my kindle has already paid for itself and then some, so the fact that it will become obsolete isn't a big deal (I've had it for 5 years). I can buy a new one in a year or so (or tomorrow) and very easily it will pay for itself.

We also have plenty of storage mediums for digital data that last much, much longer than a paper book, so ebooks win on the "surviving a mass extinction event" front too. Hell, every book published today is starting out as an "ebook" anyway, given that they're all written digitally. Given that, it's even easier to distribute it digitally than physically.

<comment><USER17> There are 49 remaining copies of the Gutenberg Bible, I'm not sure how you can claim with a straight face that digital media last "much, much longer" than an acid-free book.

<comment><USER18> Reading devices aside, you can copy an e-book and have the exact same ebook. You can back it up across a variety of mediums, and keep doing it so long as we have access to digital devices. The ebook containers (epub and mobi) are also remarkably future proof, consisting mostly of HTML and CSS.

I can also assure you that a lot of time, money and resources have gone into keeping the Gutenberg Bibles around; and it's not as if your or I could pick one up and read it (unless it was copied into a digital format and distributed).

<comment><USER17> While all of what you say is true, and there are numerous additional advantages mentioned by GP, I am responding specifically to:

> _We also have plenty of storage mediums for digital data that last much, > much longer than a paper book, so ebooks win on the "surviving a mass > extinction event" front too._

My assertion is simply that this isn't accurate. Digital is easy to copy exactly, but also easy to lose completely; I see the sibling comment about Github's archival storage, but most of us don't have a way to either print or read microfiche, and surely, this is less apocalypse-proof than plain old acid-free paper.

<comment><USER18> If, and only if you can protect that paper from the elements. If someone devotes effort to protect those paper copies.

Frankly, any event which can destroy all digital copies of a book can just as easily destroy physical copies. And the same amount of money and effort put into the preservation of a physical book, when applied to a digital book, will be just as effective (digital books can in an extreme case, be printed out on "acid free" paper as the raw HTML and CSS, and redigitized later with no loss of fidelity).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> james-skemp I can't help but compare this to the tabletop RPG space, something I've gotten into recently for inspiration.

Over the last few months I've spent a good deal of money at DriveThruRPG. Distributed via (usually) watermarked PDF, with limited security.

Prices are cheap, and often the electronic version is included for free if you get a print on demand version.

Buy a product and want to get a bundle it's in later? Bundle price of the product is discounted (not the price you pay, which is fine).

When I was buying electronic versions of programming books about a decade ago this is what I was hoping for. Instead I have useless files since they can no longer authenticate.

<comment><USER19> I'm in the RPG space myself. Ive basically bootstrapped up a small but profitable publishing company in that scene ([http://shop.swordfishislands.com](http://shop.swordfishislands.com)).

I also like how DriveThruRPG gives drm free PDFs. The watermark is up to the creator (I don't). I wish they took a smaller cut on their market though. :p

There is also the Bundle of Holding, that does bundles of drm free rpg PDFs and content. It's pretty great as well.

My personal take is that the ebook/pdf/digital book market is replacing the "cheap paperback/trade" market. I use Kickstarter to raise funds for pretty deluxe offset print runs and am then pretty liberal with the digital copies (buy a book get the digital free, charity bundles, bundles, free in person download codes, etc). This seems to have been beneficial because the "infinite digital" product serves as a gateway to the "limited, special, 'deluxe'" version.

Paperbacks, even big ones are pretty cheap to produce, so I'd imagine there'd be more of a "sales cannibalism" between a paperback and ebook wing (e.g., I have the digital I don't need the paperback) so downplaying the digital seems like it would make sense long term for books that don't make sense to exist in some sort of "deluxe, you'll want this for 50 years" format.

<comment> james-skemp I've got some of your stuff. :) I think from a BoH, in fact. (Whether part of a bundle or not, Questing Beast's videos are how I really know of your works.)

> Paperbacks, even big ones are pretty cheap to produce, so I'd imagine > there'd be more of a "sales cannibalism" between a paperback and ebook wing

Counter to that is people like Questing Beast, or the guy that did Grognardia, who like to have print. I've been going OSR systems and have purchased way more than I would have because they're electronic and won't take up (physical) space. I almost skipped Whitehack because I could only get a print copy via Lulu.

Granted, you could purchase a PDF and then pay to have it printed, but your point about deluxe editions is dead on. That's why I bought my SO the illustrated Harry Potter books, and why she bought me the Final Fantasy Ultimania books; they're beautiful deluxe books that we'd cherish and pass on to our descendents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hate that I need to break DRM to keep a copy of an ebook. There was that famous case where Amazon found out they didn't have a license for a book in Canada and pulled it from everyone's devices. The book? Orwell's 1984.

We have DRM free music from BandCamp, iTunes, CDBaby, AmazonMusic and others. But the only place to get DRM free books is Kobo, and it's not a huge selection.

Offer me a DRM free book where most of my money goes to the authors and I'd be all over it. This recent trend has lead me back to pirating the larger or older titles.

<comment><USER21> If you want "most" of your money to go to the author, you'll need to look outside traditional book publishing - even Amazon ebook publishing will take a 70% cut. Your best bet is supporting your preferred authors on Patreon, Kickstarter or other crowdfunding platforms, and asking them to refrain from adopting DRM. The crowd-funding model works very well for this, because you aren't restricted to paying per-copy in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The title is misleading and makes it sound like the publishers are actually trying to kill e-books which is not the case.

<comment><USER23> I don't know what sort of actions would fall under your definition of trying to kill e-books. But from my (admittedly unsophisticated) point of view, some publishers seem willing to at least hamstring them if it will net them more traditional sales.

[0] [https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775150979/you-may-have-to- wai...](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775150979/you-may-have-to-wait-to- borrow-a-new-e-book-from-the-library)

<comment><USER22> That's almost identical to how movie companies restrict rentals (as opposed to sales) of videos for a period after movies are released, but nobody would claim that this means movie companies are trying to "kill digital video rentals."

At the very least, "trying to kill e-books" would mean that publishers were actually attempting to convince people to buy paper books instead of e-books, which is not something they are doing. Moreover, when I first read the title of this article, I thought that publishers were actually considering ceasing publication of ebooks, which is definitely not what is being described.

<comment><USER24> Someone mentioned _Special Topics in Calamity Physics_ , so I looked it up. MSRP for the paperback is apparently $18 ([https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297621/special- topi...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297621/special-topics-in- calamity-physics-by-marisha-pessl/\);) on Amazon the Kindle version is $13.99 while the paperback is $11.39. On the other hand, Barnes and Noble has the NOOK version for $13.99 and the paperback for $16.20, so maybe Amazon is trying to kill e-readers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When e-books came along, I can only assume publishers panicked and said "we have to protect these books from being copied somehow", so they crippled them with DRM, created their own standards, and so on. Years later, the only way to _comfortably_ enjoy a purchased e-book from a major publisher (that uses DRM technology) is to:

* Pay for the crippled e-book and download it to some Adobe application that is only used to unlock your crippled e-book.

* Use a plugin for an open source application to strip the book of the DRM, creating a real e-book.

* Send your "pirated" and de-DRM'd e-book to your device of choice as it can now be easily converted.

The whole e-book market is backwards and is reminiscent of the way music was being sold around ~2005. You were forced to buy a CD so you could rip it to mp3 files and put them on your device. Sell mp3 files directly? Oh no, we can't do that, anyone can copy those! (Except you can, of course, copy the mp3 files created from the CD, so your guaranteed sale is one disc).

Then comes the argument about making piracy uncomfortable: "Sure, books can be copied, but if we at least make them annoying to copy, people will gravitate towards buying them through legitimate channels" \-- except they won't, because the reason people aren't buying through legitimate channels in the first place is the same reason for e-books as for music: they suck. They create problems for the users, they are price-inflated and overpriced (to prop up the dying physical copy-part of the industry), so everybody hates them.

I'll buy a book online if it lacks DRM, but only then. Humble Bundles are great for this. But, if you publish a book and you use crippling DRM technology because you're scared of being copied, you are making the book market a worse place for everyone, and you are contributing to the problem. Only an absolute fool would think that going back to physical copies of books is the right move here -- and if that turns out to be what happens, I will gladly dedicate my time to digitizing books made by these consumer-hating Luddites, and spreading them online against their will.

Find a new model, or die like the rest. Stop being scared of change, it's getting old.

<comment><USER26> I keep hearing again and again the same argument regarding DRM. I really doubt people (not the technical ones found here) care about DRM. They didn't care when the music industry implemented it, see how much the music pirating has fallen. I think what they care about is convenience. The convenience of instant access to hundreds of thousands of books, recommendations, ratings.

<comment><USER27> You're right that people care about convenience rather than caring about DRM - but the DRM affects the convenience. Publishers have handed Amazon a monopsony on a platter, because it's just too inconvenient to buy books somewhere else and put them on a Kindle. And that's all down to DRM.

<comment><USER25> This is exactly it. No, people don't care about DRM because they don't know what DRM is: but they care about the actual consequences. DRM makes media harder to consume, share (even to yourself) and secure through backups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm finding the article's arguments pretty unconvincing.

eBook prices might be high, but as I've grown older I've realized that the price of the content is typically well below the opportunity cost of consuming it. If a good portion of that money makes it back into creators' hands, I'm satisfied.

The author spends some time complaining about the lack of first-sale doctrine, which is just a relic from the time when all content came on costly physical media. It would be wasteful to be forbidden from selling a book that you no longer want to read, so the reasoning went.

The arguments get even more nonsensical ("eBooks don't appreciate in value", "You can't photocopy them")

Meanwhile, they totally miss my biggest issue with eBooks: that they give significant power to platform providers, who may demand unreasonable concessions from authors and publishers.

In the process of writing this, I wondered if there was a Bandcamp for eBooks. HN had an answer: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704436)

</comment><comment><USER29> For me, ebooks are life changing. I read around 100 to 150 books a year and i can carry an infinity of books in my pocket no matter where i am at in the world! And, 99% of the time ebooks are cheaper when i compare....

I put ebooks right after electricity and i dearly hope my print books disappear.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have a Kindle, but I often find myself buying the physical copy of books just for the satisfaction of having something I can physically touch. It's the same reason I go and buy physical copies of games from BestBuy when I can rather than buying games from Nintendo's e-shop.

<comment><USER31> A used copy on Amazon is often a fraction of the Kindle version price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> No worries, everybody will pirate e-books, just like it happened with music.

Indie publishers will make some money, probably more than going through a publishing house because they can sell directly to the customer and cut out the publisher. A 70% cut on eBooks sales is outright theft imho. If I were a book author and Amazon took a 70% cut, I would rather publish it online for free under a license that prohibits commercial distribution of the work (in exchange for money).

<comment><USER33> Not every culture is based on theft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Did you give or receive any books for Christmas? If so, were they physical > books, or electronic ones? I suspect that, while many of us have exchanged > real, printed books as presents, eBooks were far less popular, and unless > you give a voucher, they're almost impossible to give as presents anyway. So > why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and > music now sell and rent so well online?

Huh? You can't give digital copies of movies, music, or games as Christmas gifts for exactly the same reasons. What is this paragraph supposed to have established?

> eBook readers are still incredibly primitive, and won't even let you refer > to two or more sections of the book at the same time. You can't photocopy > them, copy quotations, or do anything remotely advantageous.

Kindles have supported copying quotations since at least 2010.

</comment><comment><USER35> One problem with e-books is that you have nothing to show for it. Books have lost their collector value.

<comment><USER18> Most books purchased are mass market paperbacks. Those have only rarely had market value after being purchased. I can't even give most of mine away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I love ebooks. I also hate drm so I only "buy" drmed ebooks if I can strip the drm and usually convert it to epub.

I do wish that the highlights I make were actually saved to the epub file rather than in a separate file that is difficult to transport to another device.

</comment><comment><USER37> New to me that ebooks have failed. I almost never buy physical books now.

</comment><comment><USER38> No! Since buying a Kindle I don't have nearly the same guilt over my stash of unread ebooks compared to the reminder I see of physical booms. I read a lot, but not as much as I buy. :/

</comment><comment><USER39> I have a Kindle which I loved and used to be my main way to read books when I lived in a third world country.

I've pretty much abandoned it since I moved to a next-day Amazon delivery country. Dead-tree books are much more convenient in the ideal case when I'm in a comfortable position at home, and I never have the foresight to buy an e-book to read something on vacation without having to carry a physical tome of whichever book I'm reading right now.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is why I love Manning Books. I actually ordered a book off of Amazon that I forgot was produced by Manning, and I went to cancel the order and get it from Manning instead. That way I got the print version, the digital version and even free digital of the older editions of it. They've won me as a customer in that I'll always order off them if they have a book I want even if it's available on AMZ.

</comment><comment><USER41> Publishers don't need to kill e-books, they were never a good product to begin with, which is why they've mostly failed to replace paper books.

The author missed the most obvious reason e-books have hit a wall. Compared to hard-copy books, e-books offer a vastly worse user experience, with the only benefit being lower price and easier storage.

Paper books are incredibly durable, easy on the eyes even for very long periods of reading, affordable, and a nice break from staring at a screen all day. Even children prefer paper books to kindles and other e-readers, so it's not a matter of nostalgia or people refusing to change. Paper books are just a really great user experience as far as media goes.

The comparison to other media like music and video is also completely wrong. Records, tapes, video cassettes, etc. are all new technologies, less than 100 years old in most cases. So eight-tracks and CDs getting replaced with mp3s and streaming services is a case of a new technology being displaced by a slightly newer technology. Books on the other hand have had centuries, even millennia to develop and perfect the user experience, which they largely have (I can't take credit for this last argument, Nassim Taleb points this fact out in his Incerto series).

<comment><USER42> I think you're completely backwards about how much ebooks are failures and in what manner. And your comparison to other media is incomplete.

> Compared to hard-copy books, e-books offer a vastly worse user experience, > with the only benefit being lower price and easier storage.

For novels, ebooks are a vastly better user experience. Adjustable font size, lighter weight, adjustable brightness and color temperature. There is no curved page warping of the text, each page is perfectly flat and legible. You can actually have the book with you when carrying around a book all day can get impractical. I suppose I should preface this with the fact that if you aren't using an e-ink screen then you really aren't using e-books properly.

> Even children prefer paper books to kindles...

There is a learning curve and pre-novel children books are more of a visual medium than text so children have exposure to page turning prior to actually reading.

> So eight-tracks and CDs getting replaced with mp3s and streaming services is > a case of a new technology being displaced by a slightly newer technology. > [...] Books on the other hand have had centuries...

This comparison still feels off... The technology of CDs, records, etc. is all pretty new but the content is just as old as the content in books e.g live concerts, live plays, oral history, etc. Bound, mass printed books were just ahead of their time compared to music & video since the latter two contain a lot more actual data (bytes/item) so incremental improvements matter much more.

Of course, I too think there are reasons why e-books don't completely replace physical novels/books.

1\. Format is only good for novels and stuff without lots of diagrams or images. Textbooks are a huge market and having e-readers the size of them is kind of impractical at this current time. Even so lots of students prefer the PDFs anyway so it's kind of a toss up. 2\. Upfront cost. e-readers are not cheap for a lot of people and people don't read a ton in general so paying for an e-reader + books vs the free library is a tough sell. (Most people don't know or don't know how to use free ebooks services through public institutions and a lot of the time they don't work on all e-readers, etc.)

I think there is also some generational trends that work against e-books such as the older & less tech savvy perhaps reading more but having learned preferences for books BUT I haven't researched this theory yet.

<comment><USER41> This really doesn't hold up. If people liked e-books and if they offered anything near the "vastly better user experience" folks here are claiming they do, they would sell better.

The publisher conspiracy theory argument as to why they don't sell is also silly. Record companies, network television stations, and hollywood studios all tried their hardest to kill streaming music, mp3s, streaming video and so on. They failed miserably and those new mediums succeeded because they offered the user a great experience that they weren't getting previously. If anything, publishers have taken a much warmer approach to e-books than the recording industry did to digital music. Fortunately for them e-books just aren't very good and have mostly failed on their own.

If e-books offered real benefits over traditional books that most customers actually valued, it wouldn't matter what publishers thought or did, e-books would succeed the way streaming music and television have.

In terms of generational trends, the only folks I regularly see with e-books are retired baby boomers, so if anything I'd expect e-book sales to gradually decline as that generation rides into the sunset.

I like technology as much as the next guy. Much of the time tech can offer serious improvements over the way something was done before, but sometimes it can't. We need to get over the knee-jerk belief that digital always equals "better".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Worse the latest gen kindles have firmware/DRM that can't be cracked (yet).

I was sorta OK with all their bullshit because I knew I could break it (for personal use/backup)

Might need to steal my mom's ancient kindle

</comment><comment><USER44> This is how an industry sets itself up for disruption.

</comment><comment><USER45> I can't read a space fantasy/sci-fi book on the same device that has my addictive free cell game.

<comment><USER46> You can as soon as you converted it to EPUB.

<comment><USER47> I think the issue here is not the technological ability to read it but rather the personal ability to decide to read rather than playing the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Amazon has a monopoly and monopsony in the ebook market. Oddly, the department of just does not seem to care. Their recent test of "does it hurt consumers" is too narrow. In this case the monopsony is hurting the entire industry.

</comment><comment><USER49> Physical books are gone. The people who actually read books have already switched to e-books. I haven't bought a single physical book since i bought the first iteration of the amazon swindle.

Some people who also read books will try to refute this argument, saying they still buy love and read physical books. So do i. I love physical books. I love them as a commodity. I love holding them, reading them, putting them on display after finishing them, but sadly, it's simply not convenient for someone who really reads. When i finish one book and want the next in the series, when i find out about a book that i am actually curious about what it is saying, i will simply get the e-book. The desire to read and convenience simply wins.

I thought the last iteration of the generic ebook reader was my last purchase because it had the backlight, but now they came up with the yellow backlight so i have to buy this. Blue light causes macular degeneration and yellow light is so much more comfortable.

Ebook readers are like a dream come true. When they came out, i thought wow, truth is probably solipsism.

<comment><USER50> Physical books are not "gone". The word you are looking for is "dominant". Physical books dropped down to about 80% of the new book market in 2012, and since then have held steady or even gone back up, closer to 90% in recent years. The used book market is, of course, even more dominated by physical books.

The preference for physical books over e-books is actually higher among younger readers than older readers (who appreciate being able to increase the font size in e-books).

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still- outsell...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still-outsell-e- books-and-heres-why.html)

<comment><USER51> Totally anecdotal here, but we bought several physical books for our nieces and nephews this Christmas. These were all requested by them, too. Totally didn't expect that.</comment></comment></comment>


Researchers unearth 'iron dragon' of ancient Queensland outback - <AUTHOR> https://www.smh.com.au/national/researchers-unearth-iron-dragon-of-ancient-queensland-outback-20191003-p52xf5.html <comment><USER2> Better article with further information from the team [https://theconversation.com/4-metre-flying-reptile- unearthed...](https://theconversation.com/4-metre-flying-reptile-unearthed-in- queensland-is-our-best-pterosaur-fossil-yet-124581)</comment>


And now, some smoking guns (or "part two of angels that charge") - <AUTHOR> http://calacanis.com/2009/10/13/and-now-some-smoking-guns-or-part-two-of-angels-that-charge/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this.

We're going to have these people on this Friday's This Week in Startups at 1PM pacific. <http://bit.ly/mW2zR>

If you know anyone from Keiretsu Forum who had a GOOD or bad experience we're looking to have them on the show.

<comment><USER3> Unshortened URL: <http://thisweekinstartups.com/> (no need for bit.ly)

Enjoyed the post, keep it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is very helpful information for entrepreneurs, and I commend the poster for his courage, but I think it is highly risky from a legal standpoint.

The use of phrases such as "bogus forums" can readily be attacked, and (in my long experience in the law) it is precisely those who are most unscrupulous who are quickest to seize on technical points to try to bludgeon you in the courts. Does "bogus" connote fraudulent? Is there nothing at all of value that is being offered? Maybe not. But using this type of phrase puts the one who is otherwise exposing questionable practices in the position of potentially having to prove that the forums are _nothing but_ frauds, which might be hard to prove.

Yes, free speech is involved but an attack on someone's manner of making a living sets one up for "libel per se" charges, which can be tough to fight. With the web as the forum, the claimant can also shop forums to find the most sympathetic court available.

I have fought fights like this before, and I know what they involve. They need to be fought in a way that is _effective_ and not merely righteous. The latter is not bad but can be undermined if you give your opponent gratuitous ammunition with which to attack. It is my belief that the same fight can be waged at a slightly more philosophical level and remain completely effective. Therefore, the risks being taken by naming specific parties and using phrases such as "bogus forums" will only serve to weaken an otherwise compelling position being advanced by a strong proponent of a good cause.

At this point, whatever has been done has been done and the fight will proceed legally at the level just described. It will take a lot to fend off the vicious attacks to come. I wish the author well in his endeavor. He is on to something and I hope he can handle it effectively. The entrepreneurial community will certainly benefit from his efforts.

<comment><USER5> I agree that this can probably be just as effective while avoiding making claims that may not stand up in court (eg, "bogus forums," & "nothing but frauds") but avoiding naming firms and keeping it all high level and philosophical is not as effective, even if it is probably safer.

If you have a legal background, I think you might want to see if you can find precedents in the talent (modelling, acting, script-writing) fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this - people are waking up and challenging the old guard which at least to me seems to be motivated by profit at any cost. We see this with corporations, government, and even web businesses at every level.

We have spawned a new generation of idealism where profit is a side effect of actually giving a shit about our customers. What a concept.

<comment><USER7> The 'old' guard in VC land definitely isn't in on it, I see it more as a bunch of highway robbers calling themselves VCs, making money of people that are somehow desperate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kudos to Jason Calacanis.

I'll be spreading the world through my channels.

<comment><USER8> *word

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From a potential investor's point of view, would you want to invest in a startup that spent scarce funds on a scheme like those mentioned here instead of adding value in another way?

</comment><comment><USER10> I always get a little nervous when third parties, whether it be the government or folks like Jason Calacanis, try and tell companies how they should price their products.

I don't want anyone telling me how to price my company's products.

Pay per pitch is sleazy. But it's not illegal.

(not talking about the deceptive pay per pitch, that's a different story)

<comment><USER2> No one said it was illegal... oh wait, actually someone said it might be.... but that's besides the point!

The issue here is the free market, and my email newsletter/blog are part of the "free market forces."

The testimonials from folks who felt ripped off, or worked at Keiretsu, are also free-market forces.

In fact, so is this thread.

so, don't worry about me telling them the price because they can ignore me!

<comment><USER11> Agreed, reputation is one of the most important aspects of the free market. It's expensive to build and can be destroyed quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Um, it's none of YOUR business how these firms run their deals. Not that I find the practice equitable, nor a lawsuit meritorious on the available information, but if that's THEIR business model and the founders are willing to fork over the cash, that's THEIR CHOICE.

If you really want to FIX this, offer up a viable structured alternative to aggressively pursue their business. It's easy to throw spit-balls from the back of the classroom. I'd expect much more from somebody who's been down that road--on both sides of the table.

Instead this whole affair comes across, in gestalt, as a series of public ad hominem attacks on other parties and a plea for personal attention in the minimus.

If your ambition is to be a "shock podcaster" and garner a Dave Winer-esque reputation, you're, sadly, headed down the right track. You complained about being publicly "berated" at Gnomedex '07. Kettle. Pot. Black.

<comment><USER2> Actually, if you look at my first email I suggested that we would do an "open angel forum" if they didn't drop the fees.

So, I'm fairly down with the concept of creating something competitive! I mean, that's what I did when I got upset about the DEMO conference charing startups $20k for six minutes on stage!

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, do you have a business model in mind for this?

IE, if not for the Crusade (or Jihad), do you have a reason for running an alternative?

<comment><USER2> Very simple:

1\. do it in a free or cheap location 2\. ask a law firm to buy breakfast 3\. use open source software/posterous to host the website 4\. don't be a greedy f@#$%k and take $6k from startups desperate to raise capital.

best jcal :-p</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Finally, A JooJoo Update: VentureBeat Interview - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/01/joojoo-crunchpad-tablet/

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting tidbits:

\- When asked about how many pre-orders they got, Chandra refused to release numbers, which is fine. I, along with many others, have a feeling it's not much, even if it apparently "exceeded [FusionGarage's] expectations"

\- The article's title seems a bit deceptive. Or perhaps I missed something. The title, "JooJoo CEO pledges to ship this month, claims deal with leading phone maker", really seemed to suggest they were in talks with a major phone maker for some 3G connection. In the interview, however, all Chandra does is "not rule out" the possibility of 3G.

\- On having an App Store, Chandra strongly said No, citing his belief that with the Internet, no one needs Apps. Moreover, he also suggested that iPhone Apps are merely copies of what's available online. I will not criticize that, because honestly I wouldn't know where to start but it sure does sound like a cop-out to me especially with the amount of success behind the iPhone that can be directly attributed to the 140,000+ applications available on the device.

If the JooJoo did offer an App Store clone anyways, would developers really jump on? Probably not. So, even though this is a clear cop-out, even if he had major plans for an JooJoo Apps, it's highly unlikely he could get that off the ground. I suppose it's easier to just bash the iPhone App Store and claim the Internet as your savior.

\- Lastly, when asked about perhaps the most interesting question – what differentiates the JooJoo from the iPad or why the JooJoo is better – Chandra cited two things: bigger size and flash.

Two things. First, it's tough seeing an educated critic asking for an unstable, albeit very popular, web application known for causing a horrendous amount of system crashes. I still don't understand why no Flash on the iPhone is a problem. Adobe has to wake up and fix things; otherwise, HTML5 will very soon replace it. Good riddance. Now, regarding the bigger size. Besides the fact that it seems very immature to use 'bigger size' as your top feature, it's also interesting to me just how dismal it makes their situation look. "What's your top feature over the iPad?" "Well, we're, like, an inch bigger."

<comment><USER2> > I still don't understand why no Flash on the iPhone is a problem.

Really? a full 50% of my browsing nowadays uses something with flash in it. (as I sit here typing while watching my hulu queue).

> HTML5 will very soon replace it. Good riddance.

We are in most definite agreement here. I'm not saying flash is great or anything, but not supporting flash in someway is like not supporting .jpg files. Heck, even my gp2x wiz ( <http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/retro- gaming/bfc7/> ) supports a little bit of flash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone actually used Flash on a touchscreen, whether tablet or phone sized? It would appear that there would be major obstacles (e.g. how do you hover the "mouse" over something or get keyboard input for games) but I've never heard anyone complain about it so either it all just works beautifully or it simply doesn't exist yet.

<comment><USER4> It's easy to program a Flash app to work with a touchscreen -- just limit your interactions to mouseDown, drag, mouseUp. But if an existing app relies on hover or keyboard, I can't see how you'd go about using it. Maybe if the screen were extremely sensitive, it could work like a Wacom: light contact "places" the mouse, heavier contact causes a mouseDown event. But that's not in the current technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I think everybody was taken aback by the relatively low price of the iPad...when the pricing for this was set, I think lots of people were amazed it could be so cheap...now it seems a bit high in comparison.

The difference a day makes.

<comment><USER5> Apple has established itself as a premium brand. I would hate to go head to head with them at a comparable price... People are going to think that the Apple is a Lexus and you are a Chevrolet unless you have a couple of billion dollars and a decade to invest in advertising your brand.

That being said, I will say I like the idea of a 16:9 tablet. I owned a Toshiba Portegé TabletPC and loved web browsing on it. It never crossed my mind to try to watch a movie on it. But I now have almost all of my DVDs legally ripped and do watch things from time to time in bed or on a plane.</comment></comment>


Unexplained red flashes on the moon's surface - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_lunar_phenomenon

<comment><USER2> Ok seriously, now I know we are becoming reddit.

</comment><comment><USER3> its just the mooninites taking pictures</comment>


We built Yelp for Grad School Professors - <AUTHOR> http://ratemysupervisor.ewakened.com

<comment><USER2> Right on! Something like this is desperately needed. People don't realize what a huge impact their supervisor will have on their education.</comment>


Show HN: Quickly build a production ready image classifier from your images - <AUTHOR> https://blog.machinebox.io/how-anyone-can-build-a-machine-learning-image-classifier-from-photos-on-your-hard-drive-very-5c20c6f2764f <comment><USER2> I think it would be worthwhile for HN to come up with some sort of rule or strong guideline at least that says if you are going to post a Show HN item, you should pop in and answer questions in a timely manner. There are many great questions here going unanswered 18 hours later so far.

ObML: It would be nice if the tutorial covered categories that aren't already in the standard big generic models. For example, instead of dog and cat, use something new that doesn't exist in the model, and show how to train for that.

Also as feedback, the terminology "submit your images" clashes with the statement that data doesn't leave your own system. Does the latter statement mean "in normal use after training is completed"? As opposed to during training, where the images do leave your system? There is wiggle room for either meaning here, so more clarity would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Teaching essentially involves opening each image, converting it into a base64 string, and submitting it to the /classificationbox/teach API endpoint in a request that resembles this.

Why base64?

<comment><USER4> My assumption would be because base64 is a very common format to create a textual representation of binary data.

<comment><USER5> Yes but why represent data this way when HTTP can already handle binary? Does base64 actually compress binary data enough to make these optimized requests? I'm genuinely asking because I have not googled it yet.

<comment><USER6> Base64 doesn't compress at all, in fact it's only 75% as efficient as binary, meaning that encoding a file into Base64 increases its size by a third.

Base64 uses a 64 character alphabet (hence the name), so you can only represent 64 different values within each byte. 64 == 2^6, so basically you are using 6 bits out of every byte and losing the other 2 bits.

HTTP can use compression to reduce the size of the Base64 representation, but assuming the images were already using a compressed format, all this is going to do is mitigate the inefficiency, it's not going to be more efficient overall.

<comment><USER7> It's worth noting that for highly-compressible types of files, if you do need to use base64 for some reason it's still more space-efficient to compress first (before base64). If you can compress to 2/3 the size, base64 will only bring it back to the original size again.

This mainly applies when you have to transmit binary data using a text-based format like JSON or XML. I've also used this before to build a shell-script- based installer, where a compressed archive is base64'd in a variable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is interesting that the words "production ready" can be used in connection to image classifiers. Google is unarguably the leader of this in the world, and yet Google photos search for cats shows me dogs and a search for dogs shows me cats and sometimes rats. We're probably still a few years away from production-ready image classifiers of any sort.

<comment><USER9> Google doesn't run those images through a pixel-level ConvNet, Google's algo uses a combo of the HTML info surrounding the image and the image's popularity. Running every image on the web through a CNN would be computationally infeasible

ConvNets for image classification (like what the article is about) often achieve better-than-average-human performance

<comment><USER10> _> better-than-average-human performance_

There is false, except under some contrived tests. NNs still aren't very good at handling rotations, can be confused by changing single pixels and often recognise shapes out of complete static.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks great!

But not entirely clear when looking at the site, what would be the pricing to classify say 20,000 images from 20 different folders?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is neat, but sadly useless for what I'd imagine many of us have. Pictures of people we want to classify. Possibly of events.

Classifying events is often most easily done by looking at the metadata of the image, so converting to base64 just the image is probably a bad idea. (Specifically, I'd expect the date/time and possibly location data to be of help.)

Classifying the people is a helluva challenge. As someone in a family of 6, I don't think machine classification has much of a chance on getting pictures of my kids right. Especially if it doesn't have the dates on the pictures. I've seen some pictures of my oldest daughter that I would swear are my youngest son.

<comment><USER13> Give it a try.

Many AI classes talk about the fact that metadata are less often relevant than we think and are often embedded in the image in a way the classifier easily learns.

In an event, the classifier will probably spot a few architectural elements that will make useless to rely on the time of the picture.

On my first attempt at image classification with deep learning I was surprised at how a very badly design and not custom-tailored network managed to outperform a classifier that had several days of work into it.

I'd say give it a try anyway, you could be surprised.

<comment><USER12> As I said, there are some pictures where the only thing in them are my kids. Lighting was such that they are literally all that is in the picture. And I'm talking about 3 month old pictures. They look identical. Not surprisingly, even the well trained classifiers of Google and Amazon get them wrong.

None of this was to say this isn't impressive. It truly is. I don't know why my bar for the magic of image recognition is so high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks great! Uploaded to

[https://notebooks.azure.com/smortaz/libraries/hvasslab-TF- tu...](https://notebooks.azure.com/smortaz/libraries/hvasslab-TF-tutorials)

ready to clone & run...

</comment><comment><USER15> Would it be sensitive enough to pickout differences in wear patterns on the backs of playing cards? We play Rook daily at lunch, and there's a kitty, and we always want to know what the cards were. If you took a picture of the backs and let machine learning figure out what cards they were, we could know after the hand is done.

</comment><comment><USER16> Do I need a lot of images for this to work? One of the biggest barriers to entry in machine learning is not having enough sample data to train on. I don't have 10,000 images of my family and friends. Would this sill be useful?

</comment><comment><USER17> Is that Docker image capable of utilizing a GPU?</comment>


How an Idea to Develop a Safer, Smart Gun Backfired - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-develop-a-safer-smart-gun-backfired <comment><USER2> _he explained that it was only supposed to fire if the shooter was wearing a special wristband with a little radio frequency transmitter inside. The CEO put on the wristband and went to pull the trigger. ... And it didn 't shoot. Just silence._

Those focused on ensuring guns aren't fired fail to grasp the paramount importance to buyers that guns fire with absolute reliability when they're supposed to. The understanding is that it will be used in a situation where failing to shoot will allow a bad person to destroy someone good, and failing to fire when needed is literally a terminal flaw. Alas, those pushing for "smart guns" are perceived as, if not actually, trying to disarm upstanding citizens. This is not a successful business plan.

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of the discussion of nuclear safety in the book _Command and Control_ , where the tension of securing trigger devices is quoted as "always/never": a weapon should always work properly if intentionally deployed, but never by accident or by misuse. Same issue, different scale.

(The book is a great read and I recommend it, even if it makes you wonder how we got to 2016 as well off as we did. "Always" was always more important than "never")

EDIT: article about the book, + quote: _"  In fact, it is easy to design weapons so that they can never fire by accident or unauthorized use. It is equally easy to design them so that they will always fire when the order is given. But it is extraordinarily difficult to meet both criteria at once—what is known as the "always/never" problem."_

from [http://www.thenation.com/article/eric-schlosser-and- illusion...](http://www.thenation.com/article/eric-schlosser-and-illusion- nuclear-weapons-safety/)

<comment><USER4> > "Always" was always more important than "never"

That's exactly the opposite of what you want from a nuclear trigger system. I mean if you actually need to launch, it's already past the point where it's going to do anything helpful. What you need is something that everyone in the world unquestioningly _believes_ will always work, even if that isn't entirely true.

OTOH, if it ever goes off by mistake, that not good. Not good at all.

<comment><USER3> That mindset seems to be relatively young in military circles (late 80s or so, if I remember the timeline in the book correctly)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Part of the reason people get so paranoid about the government pulling sudden mandates on guns in regards to one thing or another in the news is that, well, it's not paranoia. Federal, state, and city legislatures have pulled a lot of stupid moves in regards to gun regulation, like regulating aesthetic features instead of capability, creating gun owner lists that absolutely-definitely- won't-get-used-for-anything-nefarious (and then using them to confiscate guns without compensation and when the law changes), etc.

I support gun control in general, but even on a purely financial level (e.g. "I paid $X for these guns and the government might suddenly destroy their value) there are plenty of reasons for people to argue against it.

<comment><USER6> And very specifically, if "smart" handgun technology is developed, sale of all others will become illegal in New Jersey: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Childproof_Handgun_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Childproof_Handgun_Law) Of course " _a seven-member commission [would] determine whether personalized handguns qualify for use by State and local law enforcement officers_ ", all these sorts of laws have such exceptions.

And such as been proposed in California and Maryland. It's not "paranoia" when they are explicitly "out to get you".

<comment><USER7> Something similar has already happened with "microstamping", a neigh-mythical technology that would imprint the gun's serial number on all ejected casings. California has a roster of "safe" handguns which are all that may be sold by dealers in the state. However, they haven't allowed any manufacturer to add a new semiautomatic handgun without microstamping technology, which practically means that there are no new pistols being added to the list. Once the old ones fall off the list, that'll be it - it will be impossible to buy a semiautomatic handgun from a dealer in California.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article notes that Colt had fallen on "Hard Times". This is an understatement.

In the mid eighties, Colt was doing great, making hundreds of thousands of rifle for the US military. Then a five year labor strike brought the end of all military contracts as Colt replacement workers were unable to make properly functioning guns.

Colt decided to focus on the civilian market, and brought out a new high tech handgun that was so unreliable that it was eventually recalled.

Then Colt's CEO said that he was in favor of a all gun purchasers having to register federally and purchase a federal permit and training. This did not go over well. (*understatement)

His replacement, seeing that the military would not buy Colt guns and that civilians would not buy Colt guns, decided to focus on police sales.

Unfortunately making a new smart gun required ability in the two things that Colt was not good at - making reliable guns and designing new guns.

It was not just the disastrous demo that killed the smart gun - the prototype smart guns were not even able to be fired without permanent destroying the mechanism. Also, there was a delay from between when the gun was grabbed by the officer and when it could be fired. And of course, the fact that it didn't always unlock to fire even in the best possible circumstances.

Interestingly enough, police handguns have moved even farther away from the smart pistol idea. Today it's a rare department now days that does not use Glocks or M&Ps, both of which are far simpler than the average police handgun of the nineties.

<comment><USER6> There's a bit more to it than that; whatever the reasons (I forget), Colt lost the M16 contract to FNH in 1988 (but continued to make them for civilians, and in many years/all recent years/decades? at a high level of quality), and but essentially got it back in 1994 when the Army switched to the M4 carbine (the Marines stuck with their long barrel and therefore more effective M16s). Now they've lost M4 manufacturing exclusivity and for a while all contracts, and only recently won one of the new M4 full auto only, no 3 round burst variation contracts, presumably because they're desperate enough to bid really, really low.

On top of all the other problems, the company is now run by financial vultures who are bleeding it dry.

And, yeah, their flirtation with gun control did not go over well, I would never buy one from them after that, although their relative lack of quality in the category I might have otherwise (M1911s, which they were the original manufacturers of back in 1911) is the biggest reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A truly safe gun must do two things: 1) always fire when the trigger is pulled, and 2) never fire when the trigger is not pulled. So called Smart Guns are deficient on point 1 and probably always will be. How often does an iPhone decline to unlock with a fingerprint and require a passcode? That would never be acceptable in a life or death situation that requires a gun.

<comment><USER4> Without wishing to comment on what is or isn't feasible now or in the future, I'd approach the technical requirements similarly to self-driving cars. They simply need to crash less often than a human driver. They don't need to be completely infallible, though for emotional reasons they need to crash _significantly_ less often than humans.

Similarly, a gun would need to have a failure rate somewhere in the order of 1% of the typical misfire rate. E.g., if a particular gun & ammunition pairing misfires 1 time out of 1,000 then the security system must fail no more than 1 in 100,000 times or thereabouts.

At that point, any misfire due to the security system would be indistinguishable from a misfire that would have happened anyway.

A 1% increase in misfires would not equate to a 1% increase in unintentional deaths, but a viable safety system would significantly decrease them. In fact, it might be possible to mathematically derive a much higher break-even point, but I daresay that would not work out well politically.

<comment><USER10> The failure rate of modern handguns is _extremely_ low.

I carry a 1911, which is a design more than a century old. I've fired that gun around 15,000 times without a single failure of any kind.

<comment><USER11> _I carry a 1911, which is a design more than a century old._

John Moses Browning was the Leonardo da Vinci of gun design. In addition to the M1911, several of his other designs are still in production, and indeed, in active duty use by various militaries.

<comment><USER10> I agree, for what it's worth.

I carry my SW1911 90% of the time these days. I occasionally switch out for a Hi-Power (another Browning design!) or a Glock 31.

The Hi-Power is honestly a more practical gun, but the trigger is harder to make decent, since Browning was working around his own patent that he'd sold. My 1911's trigger is the best I've ever seen, bar none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gun control should not be a national issue, it should remain a local one. What works for the people of urban cities will not necessarily work for rural areas. Like it or not the second amendment exists and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. While I choose not to exert my right to bear arms I should not force other people to conform to my lifestyle.

<comment><USER13> My biggest issue with guns is that they let one person become judge, jury and executioner without due process. Yes, you can kill someone in many other ways but guns have a tendency to deliver multiple kills with incredible ease and detachment.

I do understand that rural areas are going to need a level of protection from wild animals that might not be required in urban areas.

My suggestion for how to solve gun violence is to put together an "Apollo moonshot" project to develop a non-lethal weapon as effective at stopping as a lethal one. Phasers on stun is my dream. Once you can stop a person without harming them you can then take a tobacco industry marketing campaign to make owning a lethal weapon unacceptable in civil society. Rifles and relevant lethal weapons should still be available outside of urban areas unless non- lethal alternatives would work.

<comment><USER14> _I do understand that rural areas are going to need a level of protection from wild animals that might not be required in urban areas._

How do people living in rural areas with strong gun control even survive?

<comment><USER15> I realize your comment was said in good-natured jest, but I've actually had to shoot (based on behavior) several rabid wild animals over the past decade that were an immediate threat to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Back when seat belt laws where being introduced more than a few people complained that sometimes a person will die in a car accident because of the seat belt. Saner heads prevailed because the overall statistics showed much fewer deaths and injuries occur when using seat belts vs not using seat belts.

To me insisting on a 0% failure rate for a smart gun is very reminiscent of the mandatory seat belt arguments. Sure... sometimes a gun will fail and the owner end up injured/dead and that's pretty awful. However, if the overall the number of deaths and injuries has been reduced then those tragedies will have been "worth it".

It is irrational to insist on a 0% failure rate.

It is also probably irrational to insist on the same failure rate as existing guns. The correct measure is the deaths/injury rate.

Unfortunately the US doesn't seem to want to tackle the problem of gun deaths/injuries in any sort of scientific manner. There needs to be accurate and reliable data on gun ownership, gun usage (scared someone off), gun deaths, gun injuries. Solid data is the foundation of good policy... and preventing the gathering of good data is pretty telling.

And far too many vested interests are more than willing to mislead people. Specifically, the NRA's constant "confiscate our guns" rhetoric i pretty unconscionable... but folks seem to blithely accept this sort of misrepresentation.

<comment><USER2> Such calls for sensible data analysis followed immediately by wanton bashing of the NRA and gun owners is making it very difficult to have a sensible discussion on the subject in this country.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure I'd call what I said "wanton bashing".

The NRA does attempt to mislead folks on a regular basis... this is well documented.

<comment><USER6> [citation needed]

As for your specific claim about confiscation, how about this tag I was reminded of on a blog that's in my early morning rotation: [http://blog.joehuffman.org/category/gun-rights/no-one- wants-...](http://blog.joehuffman.org/category/gun-rights/no-one-wants-to- take-your-guns/)

Or Senator Diane Feinstein, who represents a lot of HN readers), telling "Mr. and Mrs. America turn 'em all in" in a _60 Minutes_ interview.

And let me assure that, using registration lists, guns have been confiscated in the US, e.g. SKSs in California after the government decided they were "assault weapons" after all (OK, you were allowed to move them out of state, but...).

<comment><USER2> NY regularly sends police to the homes of the recently deceased to take their guns, denying heirs ownership thereof.

<comment><USER6> I would also expect that of other states where mere gun ownership is an explicitly granted by the state privilege to particular individuals, e.g. Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey off the top of my head.

And California has created a unit to do the same to people they think are prohibited. Most recent horror story was about a nurse who'd _voluntarily_ checked herself into a mental ward because of a medication screwup (i.e. it was self-limiting) and her husband's guns were confiscated: [http://bearingarms.com/california-returns-confiscated- guns-t...](http://bearingarms.com/california-returns-confiscated-guns-to- husband-following-wifes-voluntary-mental-health-visit/)

I'm not even sure in Crazy California a voluntary admission is a disbarring event, it isn't Federally or of any state I'm aware of, as this case shows it shouldn't be.

And note medication screwups/unwanted mental side effects happen all the time, a former SO got frank suicidal ideation when switched to a standard normally well tolerated anti-depressant (she just stopped taking the drug and was careful while it worked its way out of her system).

And many drugs can cause mania, as I can personally attest (hypomania in my case, and my "you're impaired" flag kept me from doing anything stupid including spending money needlessly (well, beyond buying a power supply as a kit when they're so cheap and easy in the form of wall-warts) until the problem was realized). Many that are not normally psychoactive, I've read systemic steroids like prednisone often do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The safest "gun" is not owning a gun. There's an abundance of studies showing that gun ownership tracks with an increase in home injury/death. The idea that having a gun protects you from home intrusion is a red herring because home intrusions almost never happen and the chance of an accident is possible every day there is a gun around. Private firearm ownership should be illegal.

<comment><USER18> The safest way to ski is not to ski.

The safest way to sky-dive is not to sky-dive.

The safest way to have sex is not to have sex (I like the last one the most as it is touted by various groups).

That logic is absolutely broken.

<comment><USER19> What's broken about the logic? All of those things are logically consistent.

If you mean that foregoing experiences for safety's sake isn't your cup of tea, that's one thing; but claiming it's logically broken is simply false.

<comment><USER18> It's not logically consistent. You're claiming that p implies not p

<comment><USER20> Oh come on, the claim is that safe (p) <-> !p, which is a bit different. Attack the actual claim.

<comment><USER21> @pmalynin, you forgot the safety variable.

      p | q | p ∧ q → ¬q
      --+---+</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-----
      T | T | F         You can't be safe and own a gun.
      T | F | T         You can be safe and not own a gun.
      F | T | T         You can be unsafe and own a gun.
      F | F | T         You can be unsafe and not own a gun.

@rwjwjuwjudf, logical implication is correct - logical equivalence leads to this trainwreck:

      p | q | p ∧ q ↔ ¬q
      --+---+</comment><comment>-----
      T | T | F         You can't be safe and own a gun.
      T | F | F         You can't be safe and not own a gun.
      F | T | T         You can be unsafe and own a gun.
      F | F | F         You can't be unsafe and not own a gun.

<comment><USER20> Nice analysis! I was thinking safety is a function equivalent to negation. But I agree if safety and gun ownership are separate variables.

      p | safe (p) | ¬p | safe (p) ↔ ¬p
      --+</comment></comment><comment>----+----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>--
      T | F        | F  | Owning a gun is unsafely owning a gun.
      F | T        | T  | Not owning a gun is safely owning a gun.

I think this is the original reason why it's confusing, because the sentence "not owning a gun is safely owning a gun" is highly unintuitive. There is a contradiction because safely owning it conflicts with not owning it.

edit: I think we can legitimately fix the confusing sentence to read "not owning a gun is safely not owning a gun".

<comment><USER21> Safety as a negation would be an xor operation, which leads to the wacky logic. Both of you are right though, I was probably far too generous in treating @minikites's use of the word "is" as a logical implication instead of the logical equivalence that you suggested. The resulting logic leads to conclusions that both support and refute the likely intent of the original statement. So either the logic is broken or the intent is :) If only @minikites had used the word "maybe" instead of "is"... the weaker position would have been supported with a logically consistent argument.

<comment><USER20> I think the original expression was poor, it could perhaps be paraphrased as "gun safety is an oxymoron".

<comment><USER21> That still leaves five words to debate about, to quote a very sly fellow "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." I'm pretty sure we could distill the argument to the point where we find ourselves debating the finer points of chaos theory.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Toronto's Google-linked smart city draws opposition over privacy, costs - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/quayside-torontos-google-linked-smart-city-draws-opposition-over-privacy-costs/2019/05/05/e0785500-6d12-11e9-bbe7-1c798fb80536_story.html <comment><USER2> As far as I can tell the opposition is driven by Blackberry who want to exclude foreign ocmpanies so they can bid for the contract without any competition.

Proof? One of the BB founders got the front page of the Globe (Canada's national paper) to decry Google and conclude that only Canadian companies should be allowed to bid, without ever disclosing that BB was working on a competing product. The BB product was announced a couple of months later.

I think it was one of the most dishonest things I've ever seen in the Globe (which is otherwise a pretty good paper).

Imagine how BB could roast Canadian taxpayers if they could exclude foreign companies!

<comment><USER3> As a Canadian living within walking distance of the project, this is the first I've heard of blackberry's involvement. There are some people in tech that are excited about the project, but the vast majority of locals are extremely cynical of Google's intentions and skeptical of their long term commitment. The entire city team was fired not long ago for... Not quite incompetence, but close enough.

The fact is Toronto doesn't need this sort of project to begin with. There's more construction going on here than anywhere in North America and developers are fighting to build more, while prices continue to climb anyways.

<comment><USER2> You've probably noticed that the cynicism is reinforced by a concerted campaign of eg. op-eds, but if you want hard evidence, here's the front page piece I was talking about:

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-sidewalk- tor...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-sidewalk-toronto-is- not-a-smart-city/)

A lot of favours must have been called in for them to get the Globe to prostitute themselves like that. I've been reading the Globe since I was old enough to read and I've never seen them do anything as dishonest as that.

Everything company is after profit and will behave accordingly. If there are issues with long-term commitment of Google, or any other concerns, then it must be addressed in the contract.

The city must absolutely drive a hard bargain, but if we start the whole thing with inuendo, dishonest media campaigns, calls to misplaced patriotism, then they must be interested in some sort of sweet heart deal without competition.</comment></comment></comment>


Russian spies detained in The Hague were planning cyber break-in at Swiss lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/09/russian-spies-detained-in-the-hague-were-planning-cyber-break-in-at-swiss-lab-nrc/ <comment><USER2> Quite believable. Russian gov. has a motive to interfere with OPCW investigations, and anything that can sow more doubt, fear, confusion or distraction is good as to their strategy post-Chemical attacks that gain publicity. The final report on Douma attack is yet to be released, so it would not be late to create needless problems for the investigation, and I trust OPCW to not make up stuff about hacking attempts certainly more than secret services or Kremlin. It's a fine international organization. If anything, Kremlin is probably more interested now that OPCW gained responsibility to point fingers at perpetrators a few months ago.

<comment><USER3> Russians had to beg for the OPCW to go collect samples from Douma. While they were there, UK, FR, US were having fun bombing the area.

How can more Russian FUD be good for Russia? Because that is UK and US do everyday. They dont need Russia help.

Also OPCW does analysis in more than one lab.

Both Skripal and Syria chemical use theories are very weak.

<comment><USER2> Not really. Point me to the OPCW report that says evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria is weak.

FUD is good, because it takes away/weakens popular support from any kind of western intervention, which is good for Putin's interests in the region. Less competition.

Also you're rewriting history. I was actually watching the developments quite closely as it was happening and there were numerous reports of Russians delaying OPCW FFM on basis of security in the area, while at the same time parading around some journalists in the same area.

And last, the US and friends bombing were during the night and in a different place. Certainly nothing that would prevent OPCW FFM from operating in the area.

<comment><USER4> I have been starting to read TASS news in parallel to Reuters' feed.

From only reading news, I don't know which side to trust anymore. Putin's gov denies almost all accusations (cyberattacks, chimical attacks, nerve agents, etc) from Western countries, and instead accuses the West govs of creating a "russo-phobia" amongst people opinion.

Example of news you can read on TASS, but not relayed by Reuters : [http://tass.com/politics/1021365](http://tass.com/politics/1021365) [http://tass.com/politics/1021274](http://tass.com/politics/1021274) [http://tass.com/defense/1021107](http://tass.com/defense/1021107) [http://tass.com/world/1021091](http://tass.com/world/1021091)

And it goes on and on...

If you only read TASS, you would quickly think Western govs are not much "cleaner" than Russia

<comment><USER5> Reuters isn't a state-owned propaganda outlet; TASS has been since at least the early days of the Bolshevik regime (and maybe earlier; it was state-owned telegraph agency under the Tsarist regime, but I don't have any information of whether it acted as a state propaganda arm then; it's journalist came from a separate firm.)

<comment><USER3> That doesn't mean CIA/NSA doesn't influence it. You can clearly see the same narrative across all mainstream media. And commentators with different opinions being shutdown.

<comment><USER5> > That doesn't mean CIA/NSA doesn't influence it. You can clearly see the same > narrative across all mainstream media.

A simple explanation for that is that facts exist and impact the coverage presented by media outlets that make some effort to do what their overt role is.

I mean, alternatively, you could suspect,as you imply, that all non-fringe media that aren't state run propaganda arms of US rivals are, in fact, US state propaganda outlets pushing CIA/NSA scripted narratives.

Well, except when Paul Manafort isn't planting propaganda for Russian client regimes in them, at any rate.

<comment><USER3> I just agree we are better informed watching news from both countries when it involves them. Be it state owned or not.

"Hillary is going to win the election!" Was certainly propaganda.

I don't have any theory, but you can see they all somehow sing to the same tune, including UK and EU. They want to give their approved opinions instead of reporting reality. With the exception of the ocasional independent journalist.

<comment><USER6> >"Hillary is going to win the election!" Was certainly propaganda.

An opinion that one of two candidates would win the election was "certainly propaganda?"

<comment><USER3> Ok. What I meat was: "All mainstream media claiming Hillary was certainly the election winner. And some pointing statistics like 95%." was propaganda.

<comment><USER5> No, the predictors making that prediction weren't doing propaganda, and most mainstream outlets didn't make that (or any other prediction), though many reported the fact of the existence of one or more of the predictions that were made.

Those making the 95% prediction were using statistical models established for that purpose before the identity of the candidates or what those models would show were known. They quite arguably are bad models as they assumed state level deviations from polling results are independent where history suggests that, in fact, they are strongly correlated (a fact pointed out by Nate Silver prior to the election, in explaining why 538 had a much lower projection of Clinton's probability of victory.) But choosing a bad model isn't propaganda.

<comment><USER3> Nice excuses. What I heard was the media, and the "experts", did a bad job.

A poll, your favorite. Let's hope they used a good model. [https://news.gallup.com/poll/197090/majority-voters-think- me...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/197090/majority-voters-think-media-favors- clinton.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is it related to this? [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/30/swiss-lab- analys...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/30/swiss-lab-analysed- salisbury-nerve-agent-says-targeted-russian/)

<comment><USER7> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, we, Russians, are so stupid so decided to kill the guy who was in our prison several years ago (why did not we do that then?) with a top Soviet chemical weapon which is like droping a nuclear bomb to kill a single person. There is a information war happening to desecrate Russian Federation in the eyes of the world and nothing more.

<comment><USER9> That is one of the interesting things about all this - but there are also much easier ways to do false flag operations.

The evidence of this and previous assassination attempts is either there´s some idiot at the top of Soviet intelligence who just _has_ to be creative, or far more likely the whole point is to send a very public message to the rather large Russian diaspora, that no matter how far they run, Mother Russia is looking over their shoulder.

For that purpose, a quiet inconspicuous assassination would be totally pointless.

<comment><USER10> Wow, so what you are basically saying is that the Russians _intended_ this assassination to be discovered and demonstrated to be a poisoning attack?

<comment><USER11> Given how these stories over the poisoning have played out it certainly _looks_ that way. The "cover" story is comically poor, and they have plenty of people intelligent enough to do better.

So short of Putin calling a press conference saying "Yup, we did it" it couldn't have been telegraphed much clearer.

<comment><USER10> > they have plenty of people intelligent enough to do better

Now, that's a _very_ charitable assumption. I am not sure we have any evidence for that :-)

> Given how these stories over the poisoning have played out it certainly > looks that way.

But that would mean that they were provoking the Western countries to give them hell. I am the first to admit that I do not hold their intellectual powers in any high esteem, but even so, even for them, this sounds _outrageously_ insolent and stupid.

<comment><USER12> >But that would mean that they were provoking the Western countries to give them hell

Gee, you think?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation)

Putin clearly has no problem with the idea of provoking Western countries.

<comment><USER10> Crimea is really very much of a corner case.

First, it's not in a Western country.

Second, the annexation happened soon after the Ukranian revolution, which made the legitimacy of the Ukranian government (and the very status of the Ukranian state) at that point uncertain.

Third, there were various historical and political considerations muddying the issue (Crimea was given to the Ukraine by the head of the USSR only about a generation ago, and there was a general feeling of a historical injustice done by this act; there was a large Russian population in Crimea; and the revolutionary Ukraine was markedly nationalistic and anti-Russian, which probably pushed a large portion of the Russian-speaking Crimean population into the embrace of Russia).

Smuggling a military-grade poison in Britain is quite a different matter.

<comment><USER12> The invasion of Crimea is a much bigger deal that the Skripal poisoning. Russia clearly isn't afraid of "provoking" Western countries.

<comment><USER10> Why is it a bigger deal?

It _could_ have been a bigger deal if Ukraine were a member of NATO, and the alliance had an obligation to respond. But as the things stand, why is it a big deal — for the US, the UK, Germany, France, etc.?

(Skripals poisoning, in contrast, would imply a special operation on the soil of a sovereign Western country, using the tabooed chemical weapons. A concrete, old-school, physical action, as opposed to the more abstract propaganda wars or some shady online activities.)

<comment><USER12> >Skripals poisoning, in contrast, would imply a special operation on the soil of a sovereign Western country, using the tabooed chemical weapons.

That's nothing Russia hadn't already done years before.

<comment><USER10> And proudly signaled to the rest of the world that it was them that did it?

What cases are you thinking about?

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko)

<comment><USER10> Yes, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

Even the Wikipedia article says that the correct diagnosis — the poisoning by polonium-210 — was made to a large extent due to a happy coincidence: there happened to be a scientist in the facility where Litvinenko was treated who happened to have worked with polonium. Were it not for that coincidence, it is very possible the correct diagnosis would not have been reached, and the very investigation that followed would not gone very far.

So I am not sure how Litvinenko poisoning is an illustration of an assassination attempt advertised as such to the rest of the world. On the contrary, it looks like a murder attempt that was intended to have never been solved.

<comment><USER12> >On the contrary, it looks like a murder attempt that was intended to have never been solved

Seriously? Using Polonium meant that it took weeks for Litvinenko to die, giving him plenty of time to make it clear exactly who was responsible, and even give interviews to the press. If they wanted to keep it quiet, they did a pretty terrible job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They weren't spies, they were tourists. We get them all the time here in the UK.

<comment><USER14> Just walking around, doing nothing suspicious and carrying nothing special.

<comment><USER15> Well, carrying whatever some secret service said they were carrying (and which we should take their word for it) in an ongoing effort to revive the Cold War...

Perhaps they even had WMDs on them...

<comment><USER16> >> and which we should take their word for it

Would you rather distrust the UK secret service and believe whatever the hell Putin is saying?

My Russian parents are so happy to listen to Russian television it makes me sick (given the fact that they are Lithuanian citizens since 1991).

The question is not whether you should trust UK secret service, but rather - which side are you on? Because the fact is that we'll probably never know anyway, and Russia is happy to monetise on the liberal distrust of the government.

After all, Soviets did have a culture of managing the public opinion in their own state.

<comment><USER17> Your "logic", basically "choose your side and believe without questioning" is not appropriate for any more or less educated person, I need to say.

<comment><USER16> You choose a side based on the environment you support. The fact is that those "educated people" make uneducated disappointed in their own government, and Russia is happy to take advantage of that fact. The problem isn't the truth, the problem is the platform where that truth is practically used against your own system of values.

<comment><USER10> This is a really interesting proposition. So what you are saying is, if your values do not agree with the truth (whatever that might be; I am not sure what you mean here), then so much the worse for the truth? It is not your values that need revising, it is the truth that needs to be ignored?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Article says detained, not arrested.

<comment><USER19> Swiss newspaper article also says (Google-translated):

        Why the two were brought back to Russia and not
        prosecuted in the Netherlands or transferred to
        Switzerland, neither the Dutch military intelligence
        nor other requested authorities wanted to explain.

        It is also unknown what they did in the Netherlands.

<comment><USER20> would you have a link please?

<comment><USER19> [https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/panorama/russische-spione- auf-d...](https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/panorama/russische-spione-auf-dem-weg- ins-berner-oberland-verhaftet/story/27257777)

It's the second link from the first paragraph of the HN's submission.

<comment><USER20> thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> All this stuff sums up to the already existing superciliousness nonsense a living form needs to goes through during life, as perpetual assault to any knowledgeable human being living on this planet! Human Being going down further and further without any brake!

Edit: Nice insta downvote!

</comment><comment><USER17> I simply can not find source in the original Swiss article. The most relevant part of the article is:

The Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) confirms on request that the Swiss authorities are aware of "the case of the Russian spies who were discovered in the Hague and then taken away". NDB communications chief Isabelle Graber also writes: "The NDB has actively participated in this operation, together with its Dutch and British partners." This has contributed to the "prevention of illegal actions against a critical Swiss infrastructure".

How's that related to the two guys detained in Netherlands? I mean, the accusation of them being targeted Swiss lab?

How can I be sure this is not a sensationalist fantasy of a journo?

It would be good to publish the full report from NDB.</comment>


Looking for video player and video server solution - <AUTHOR>

A client wants to display short web videos on their website. This isn't my area of expertise so I'm looking for a video player, similar to YouTube, and a provider for serving videos. The client is open to either closed or open source solutions for the player. The client wants to serve video around the world. Any help in finding both software and services would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> I'm with Wistia (<http://wistia.com>). We specialize in video for businesses. Lemme know if I can help out. You can email me directly at ben -at- wistia -dot- com if you have any questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://flowplayer.org/>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://jitrinc.com/></comment>